Bring back rotatable crop regions (or equivalent)

[Wes Macaulay]

The problem I'm thinking of is a project where the the designers expected to place the building on its N-S axis vertically on the sheets. Then a change of mind: now the E-W axis is to be vertical on the sheets... except... they already drew it oriented N-S. In 6.1 this was no problem: rotate the crop region.

Yes you can choose to use rotate-the-view option but that's more for viewing the building from the right edge of the sheet rather than the bottom - all the tags are oriented the wrong way then.

Jeffrey McGrew's problem of buildings drawn every which way is another real problem - imagine a building whose major axis is 20d east of north... so you want to orient the major axis E-W on the sheet? Uh-uh. Can't do that in R7. You can only get an N-S orientation in this case.

The need to rotate the view of a building more than 45d from its real orientation is critical. We either need the previous behaviour of crop regions returned, or something to replace it. ASAP.

All in favour say "aye".

[beegee]

Wes,

Can you not use the Rotate this Project / True North to achieve the same result as a rotated crop region in 6.1 ? ( by defining True North as project West, in your case ? )

I'm assuming that text has been placed for the original North South orientation. In 6.1 rotating the crop region would still cause that text to be orientated sideways, as will rotating to true North in 7.0. ( You will need to select and rotate / repostion this text in both cases ) New text will place at the correct horizontal orientation.
However the annotation tags will read correctly orientated in 7.0 project rotated as they would have in 6.1 crop region rotated.

Am I missing something ?

[beegee]

I've also been thinking about Jeffrey's situation, which is different to yours.

In Jeff's case there could also be another way of tackling the problem ( yes, a workaround ), which I have mentioned in THAT THREAD (http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?p=89302#post89302).

Having said all this, I do think that the 7.0 behaviour should be changed to allow crop regions to be rotated the way we could in 6.1, and I have voted accordingly.

I'm just trying to suggest some possible "quick fixes" to both the problems you mentioned.

[Wes Macaulay]

Yeah - that's exactly what we've done - hijacked true north for this purpose (which means they can't have the REAL north orientation). I like your workaround for the unit plans... I'm going to have to remunerate you someday 8-)

[Scott D Davis]

Voted Yes, but would like to add that crop regions should rotate independant of the view title. I still want my view titles to remain horizontal relative to the sheet!

Additionally, we should be able to Mirror crop regions! This would flip the plan, but keep all annotations in their correct location. This would be much better than trying to mirror the whole model for those trying to do multiple unit housing with "plan A", and "plan A - Reversed"

[LRaiz]

First, let me state that I agree that current 7.0 behavior presents significant difficulties in setting up views in a way that makes them readable on sheets.

However I think that 6.1 implementation had its own set of problems and it would be better to consider the entire set of requirements and come up with a more optimal solution.

To that end in addition to the topic of rotating callouts of plan views I would like to find out what people think about rotating sections. Consider a long wall section that would not fit onto sheet vertically and therefore necessitates 90° rotation using "view rotation on sheet" parameter. Both 6.1 and 7.0 make this rotation; however it results in vertical view titles and vertical orientation of text notes. It is a bit surprising for me to observe the outcry related to rotation of plan callouts but to see no complaints about rotated sections. Is not the problem of sections as severe as it is for plans? How do people want to deal with such rotated sections? Specifically, would not users prefer that rotated sections even when viewed stand alone (not in sheet environment) orient themselves according to final sheet orientation and keep text horizontal/readable on sheet? Or would users rather work with stand alone sections keeping them vertical and expect that the final sheet containing rotated section would be read in rotated/vertical orientation? My personal expectation is that people want to (A) orient views to be readable on sheets, (B) have stand alone view oriented exactly the same way as they are oriented on sheets, (C) orient view titles horizontally, (D) have consistent implementation for all kinds of views including both cropped plans and wall sections.

My current hypothesis (contingent on wall section feedback) is that instead of going back to 6.1 behavior it would be preferable to clean things up a bit and have a solution such that

A) When selecting X/Y directions a view would not depend to a sequence of actions taken by a user to arrive to the final shape of crop region. Similar to 7.0 a view would determine its own natural orientation (based on project north) but then (and that is the new critical piece) it should adjust its orientation based on view-rotation-on-sheet parameter.
B) Stand alone views that have non-zero rotation on sheet parameter should orient themselves just as they would look on sheets. Dropping them on sheets should result in no additional rotation.
C) Stop automatically rotating view titles when views are rotated on sheets
D) In order to handle Jeffrey's example of uniformly oriented unit plans add 180° to 90° and -90° as an allowable value of view-rotation-on-sheet parameter.

Even though this solution does not go back to 6.1 it would qualify as something what Wes calls "equivalent" and I suspect would be better than both 6.1 and 7.0.

[sfaust]

I haven't run into this yet, so take my comments with a grain of salt, but I see two different needs here:

1 - The need to rotate the way the view looks at geometry, but let the text and view title read in the standard orientation on the sheet. For example if you want to show a wing of a building that is skewed 30 degrees as orthagonal to the sheet. In this case, I would definitely want the stand alone view to be rotated to look just as it will on the sheet.

2 - The need to rotate an entire view, text, annotations, view title and all to read in a different orientation on the sheet. For example the long wall section you mentioned. I would want the entire sheet to read in a portrait orientation rather than landscape. In this case, I would want the stand alone view to continue to read vertically so that I can work on it without laying sideways on my desk, but be rotated once it goes on the sheet. I suppose the titleblock could be rotated in this case, but that would mean that those sheets would have to be printed separately from the rest of the set.

[Scott D Davis]

I have never had the wall section issue, due to the fact you can add the breaks to the section view, and reduce the wall section to fit on a sheet by pulling the parts closer together.

[Alex Page]

We use rotated sections all the time, mainly for overall building sections...therefore (scott) one wouldnt want them cropped with break marks....but saying that, If I wanted to rotate a plan on the sheet, I would want all the text to align to the sheet, whereas for a section I would want all the text to align with the section...why?
1. if a building section is rotated, then for anyone to look at it they will physically rotate the sheet to understand it - UP DOWN ORIENTATION
2. if a plan is rotated, they wont - NO UP DOWN ORIENTATION

[aaronrumple]

I've never rotaed a section on a sheet in my life...

[beegee]

My current hypothesis (contingent on wall section feedback) is that instead of going back to 6.1 behavior it would be preferable to clean things up a bit and have a solution such that

A) >>>. Similar to 7.0 a view would determine its own natural orientation (based on project north) but then (and that is the new critical piece) it should adjust its orientation based on view-rotation-on-sheet parameter.
Yes please.


B) Stand alone views that have non-zero rotation on sheet parameter should orient themselves just as they would look on sheets. Dropping them on sheets should result in no additional rotation.
Yes please.



C) Stop automatically rotating view titles when views are rotated on sheets
Yes please.




D) In order to handle Jeffrey's example of uniformly oriented unit plans add 180° to 90° and -90° as an allowable value of view-rotation-on-sheet parameter.
Yes please.



And, in relation to sections, there are not a problem ( in this office ) since we are happy to break or crop them, as ScottD mentions.
I can however see that more flexibility for sections may be useful for other office environments, so it should probably incorporated in the proposed changes.

[Mr Spot]

I second this!!

[LRaiz]

It appears that some users do want to have sections placed on sheets horizontally and in this case expect their physical sheets to be read while rotated 90 degrees. Thus a solution might need to be a bit more complicated.

[beegee]

My vote would be to do the easy stuff first :), and worry about the sections a bit later, if that was to delay implementation.

[SCShell]

My vote would be to do the easy stuff first :), and worry about the sections a bit later, if that was to delay implementation.
Put me down for this too. Thanks
Steve

[Alex Page]

My vote would be to do the easy stuff first :), and worry about the sections a bit later, if that was to delay implementation.

I agree that timing is an issue...but it is vital that sections can be rotated...I havent worked on a high-rise that isnt rotated....means we can document the building section at a realistic scale

[Cathy Hadley]

We NEED the plan rotation working ASAP.. For me and my clients I have never been asked about rotating a section... only WHY Can't I put the callout plan 90 degrees? or 180 degress?

[Chad Smith]

I'd be shot on site if I ever put a section or elevation at 90° to the sheet. [Where's the smilie with his head ducking when you need one]

[Wes Macaulay]

I'd be shot on site if I ever put a section or elevation at 90° to the sheet. [Where's the smilie with his head ducking when you need one]Same here. This is never done in my experience.

[bclarch]

Same here. This is never done in my experience.
Did you miss Alexpage's post?

[Wes Macaulay]

Did you miss Alexpage's post?I've worked on a number of highrise projects, and locally I haven't seen it done. That's not to say that the feature isn't relevant, however. In such a case the Rotate View On Sheet parameter as it stands now would work great for this purpose, and the View Title and tags should rotate in this case. I would expect for very tall buildings that stand by themselves would almost certainly be rotated like Alex was saying; that building type is rare in our area.

[Alex Page]

Wes....you are a man of wisdom

[aaronrumple]

I'm afraid that it seems that there are numerous features that seem to have evolved based on satisfying the needs of the Freedom Tower project. This might not be reflective of a wide section of users....

(However I'd love to know how they handle all the elevation and section markers...)

[Wes Macaulay]

Wes....you are a man of wisdomOr more like someone with limited experience who only wants the software to work the way he wants. :mrgreen:

"That cranky, demanding Revit user from Vancouver"

[Andre Baros]

Couldn't this be handled with a couple of check boxes?

Text would never rotate with the view unless you checked the little box. You could rotate a view any way you wanted to and the text would remain orthogonal unless you told Revit not to.
The new check boxes would be:
Lock text (or annotations or whatever) to sheet orientation?
Lock title to Sheet orientation?

For editing purposes you would have to also add a new view orientation option: North, Project North, and Sheet.

This give us three ways to rotate a project. Rotate (true north), Rotate (project north), Rotate (view)

Better yet, you could choose text to follow the view, Text Lock (True North, Project North, View North) Title Lock (ditto)

Mod edit: Pasted text from second post into this post...

[DanielleAnderson]

Or more like someone with limited experience who only wants the software to work the way he wants. :mrgreen:

"That cranky, demanding Revit user from Vancouver"

Just to put my two cents in...we are about to upgrade to 7.0 and I did not know that the crop/view region rotation tool has gone away. This could cause us some definite heartburn down here in Seattle making us "cranky" and "demanding". ;) We are dealing with clients who are very strict on how sheets are laid out both in plan and in section and I can't imagine a section perpendicular to the page going over well, or plans that are not aligned with the sheets for that matter. While we're talking about rotating view angles, what about getting a north arrow that automatically points the direction of True North? That would be awesome!

Thanks for an interesting read,
Danielle

[Wes Macaulay]

It still works, but not if you need to rotate more than 45 degrees.

[mikefields27]

Sheets are the interface between Revit rules and the real world. We need to be able to manipulate and twist them to best represent the information. Sometimes the most informative drawing is not the most conventional.

We should not be telling each other what drawings we are allowed to have in a drawing set. Every project is different.

We have a principal here who can't much get past the technology of a mechanical pencil, so selling him on a program that loses the basic functionality of rotating a view and it's title independently is a tough job.

Though I am committed to the challenge, a little help......

[DanielleAnderson]

It still works, but not if you need to rotate more than 45 degrees.

Because of the work we do with linking in real world coordinates in large scale survey maps, 45 degrees is not good enough.

[Wes Macaulay]

Because of the work we do with linking in real world coordinates in large scale survey maps, 45 degrees is not good enough....which makes this change more of an oopsadaisy!